Americans Don’t Like “Socialism” But Many Democrats Do

Given that Gallup concedes that it has no idea “how Americans define ‘socialism’ or what exactly they think of when they hear the word” I don’t really know what we can make of this finding:

Speaking personally, five years ago I would have said socialism is a system in which the government owns many important firms and I would have said that it’s a bad idea. More recently this has actually come to pass (GM, Citigroup) but simultaneously the right has taken to calling the basic idea of having taxes pay for public services as “socialism.” And if that’s what socialism is, then I’m for it. That said, at the end of the day there’s really no tension between the view that there should be taxes—high taxes, even—to finance generous provision of public services and the view that we should have a basically capitalist economic system where private investors own firms and operate them in an effort to make profits.